Roar and Write! A Royal Order to Appease the Council
Appease animal council members and fill colorful kingdoms with dice values to become the monarch in Roar and Write!
I was in the mood for something rather quick and simple the other day. My local board game swap is also coming up soon, so I’ve been trying to play some solo games that I might be happy to part with. Enter Roar and Write! This is a pleasant enough experience with easy mechanics and lovely artwork… Back to meeting the council’s requirements!
Game Overview
Game Name: Roar and Write!
Publication Year: 2022
Designer: Carla Kopp
Artists: A. Bereza, D. Devine, K. Grierson, and J. Merchant
Publisher: Galactic Raptor Games
Solo Mode: Included in the Base Game
A set of 6 dice provide values to choose from in every age. Each animal council member prefers a specific set, many of which offer more victory points for doing better. The kingdoms may be filled with additional dice, and it all comes down to figuring out how to best use the values!
First Play
December 17, 2022
Complexity
2
Latest Play
June 9, 2023
Expansions
0
Setup Time
Almost None
Lifetime Plays
10
Play Time
10 Minutes
High Score
102
Game Area
16" x 12"
Low Score
77
Selecting Animals
Difficulty levels are based on the assortment of animals, as laid out in the rulebook. I bumped myself up to the next level, which saw the arrival of the lizard for the first time!
The goal is to appease each animal council member once, leading to a diverse selection and extra victory points.
However, rolls are entirely random and there are no ways to mitigate bad luck. Kingdoms can hold leftover dice, but filling in many spaces reduces the council offerings.
All of the animals look wonderful, though some are inherently more difficult to appease than others.
Moving On Up
Not surprisingly, I used the same overall strategy in every single play. That might be the biggest weakness: Better scores come down to better luck with the dice.
The unique numbers and pairs differ on every score sheet, too, and these will sometimes align with the animals.
Most of the time, though, everything feels a little too disjointed. There aren’t that many different decision points and I had the right idea in mind for higher scores.
It all came down to the dice, which were not rolling in my favor! I was still shy from earning a victory for myself.
Beautiful Dice
The special set of dice is quite beautiful to look at! There are subtle sparkles in the swirled green, and each die shows a different animal on the 1-value face. Lovely!
I only wish these were in a larger size. The intricate designs aren’t terrible, but the numbers can be difficult to see from far away. The curls and dots are a little random.
Eventually, I decided that this would do best in a new home… But am I terrible for keeping these dice?
A fresh set of easy-to-read dice are now in the box, which are arguably better for gameplay. I’m a dice monster. Ha!
Filling in Other Spaces
Besides the council members, kingdoms call for special requirements to award victory points. Yet a lot of these are more like catchall categories for some activity.
Every roll allows a single unused die to be used here. Adding more values means that boxes in the council offering must be crossed out to balance things out.
In practice, this is the assortment I always complete. It isn’t all that difficult or challenging, unfortunately.
It’s also possible to complete all of the kingdoms, just at the expense of not meeting the council’s preferences.
Recognizing the End Stage of a Solo Game
This is a perfectly lovely little game, and I don’t want to make it sound like it was a totally negative experience. My rating may seem very low, yet this also plays into my preferences about keeping a game in my collection. I had a lot of fun playing this a total of 10 times, which isn’t bad at all! It’s just clear that it’s time to move it along.
I know how to score well and don’t see any need to change up my strategy. Maybe I could try out the hard difficulty level, but that only means I would be trying to make more challenging sets. Nothing makes me think I would want to keep on playing. Sometimes, it’s best to move a solo game on than try to justify keeping it around forever.
Nearing a Victory
So close! I ended up a single victory point shy with this play, which was much closer than I expected it would be.
Still, I can’t say that I was making different decisions or finding other strategies. The lizard’s even dice pairs were simply more difficult to complete than I was used to.
It was a fairly monotonous time, yet I will say that I didn’t feel like I wasted my time. There might not be an amazing game here, but it was exactly what I hoped for.
Determined to do just a little better, I moved onto the next score sheet to hope that I could reach 95 victory points!
Taking a Victory Lap
A-ha! With just a little more luck, the dice rolled in my favor and put me ahead to reach the victory threshold.
It came down to the synergy with my unique number and the wolf’s reward for maximizing those values.
But notice again how similar all of these score sheets ended up. I felt like I mastered the winning strategy and simply needed to hope for better dice rolls to pop up.
Again, I don’t think this is a bad game by any means, yet it has a fairly short lifespan with a single winning strategy. Time to move it on to find someone else who will like it!
Session Overview
Play Number: 7-10
Solo Mode: Included in the Base Game
Play Details: Medium Difficulty Level
Outcome: 80, 87, 94, 97 (1 Win & 3 Losses)
Success! I slowly progressed to earn a better title with every play. At least it gave me a chance to use some colorful markers to use, too! I don’t expect to play this one again and will likely watch it leave my collection shortly. Not every solo game will stick around forever, though, and I had a pretty good time with these handful of plays. Plus, I’ll always have the dice to remember it by. Ha ha!
%
10 Plays
Affordability
Price & Value
7
Functionality
Challenges & Mechanics
7
Originality
Design & Theme
4
Quality
Components & Rules
7
Reusability
Achievement & Enjoyment
6
Variability
Distinctness & Randomness
4
+ Pros (Positives)
- There are many different council members with unique dice requirements to add a bit of variety to the goals.
- Dice may not always be used in the most optimal ways, but every round offers a way to write a value somewhere.
- Gameplay moves quickly with limited decisions and practically no need to deeply analyze any choices.
- Difficulty levels provide more challenging dice combinations and sets, and winning is never a surefire thing.
- No iconography is needed, and everything is contained between the animal cards, dice, and score sheets.
- Small decisions add a bit to the monotony with the timing to complete the council offering during each age.
– Cons (Negatives)
- Not all of the rules are as clear as they could be, and there are unfortunate typos on most of the score sheets.
- A single strategy seems to be the way to win, so no opportunities exist to try out new decisions or options.
- The luck of the dice and interaction with the random numbers on a player sheet are the major drivers of success.
- All of the mechanics are familiar, yet there is nothing that makes gameplay stand out or call for many plays.
Victory Conditions
Score 95+ Points
- Overall Goal Progress 100%
Goals and Milestones
Score at least 90 points.
Score at least 95 points.
Win at least 1 game at the easy difficulty level.
Win at least 1 game at the medium difficulty level.
Continue the Conversation
What do you think of Roar and Write!? Are there other solo games you’ve enjoyed but moved on from after a handful of plays? I definitely recommend this as a very simple roll and write, which is exactly what I wanted to play. Yet there are many others in my collection that offer just a little bit more while still being easy. At least this ended in a victory!
It takes some time and experience to let go games that don’t click. I for one still struggle with the concept. Since I bought a game, I am supposed to play it up to an arbitrary “value”. Even if it means I will not have the best of times. Who knows, maybe I will learn to love the game? It happened. Once or twice. Was it worth it though? 😉
So very true! It’s hard not to put a minimum value on the fun I expect to get out of a lot of games. But I’m trying to learn that spending a lot of time struggling to play without having a good time is not worth it… Sometimes, it’s valuable to let a game go, free up some time, and save some space. Let’s hope we both get a little better at focusing on the games we enjoy and letting go of the ones that don’t work for us!